Your Time is Up
by rubyshards
Summary: Vague SeiferSquall. AU. Seifer shows Squall just how lucky he is to still be alive. AU details inside.


_notes: This ficlet is based off an AU my sister and I created where Ultimecia defeats the SeeD, and they are now trapped in the castle with Seifer, the knight, as their watchdog. The AU and this ficlet are results of the both of us listening to "We Suck Young Blood (Your Time is up.)" by Radiohead one too many times._

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Cobwebs and dust cover his skin and fill his senses every time he breathes in the must around him. The world smells of mildew and rotten water and sulfur caused by the tear in reality that traps him here – it is almost too much to bear, and he gags when he breathes too deep. 

His breaths are shallow. He is spent, exhausted, pinned up like a sick science experiment. Rust burns the skin of his wrists; stone scraps his cheek, tangles in his hair and pulls, like fingers, when he turns his head to look around this bleak nothingness.

He does not turn his head. He stopped turning his head when he found nothing to his right, nothing to his left. Instead, he remains motionless. The only movement from him is the ragged rise and fall of his chest as he breathes in the moist, moldy air; the only noise from him is the crude, watery sound of his labored breathing.

He burns all over.

His ribs burn where magic scorched his flesh. His fingers burn from gripping his blade too tight as the gunmetal seared beneath his palms. His cheek burns from the scrap of stone when he turns his head.

He does not turn his head.

Footsteps sound like the beat of a war drum, _thumpthumpthump, _to his right. The creak of the rusted metal gate sounds like the scream of a little witch watching as he tumbles; it sounds like bones scrapping over stone, nails on the granite, screeching in his mind.

The footsteps draw closer, metal on rock – _thumpclick, thumpclick. _They stop nearby, and he can feel waves of heat, scorching and tormenting, reaching out to him and wrapping around him, a sick parody of a lover's embrace. Hands curl around his face, strong and harsh.

"Look at you _now, _Squallyboy, _Commander_. Look what you've become now. And look what _I've _become now."

The words burn him; stab into his flesh, a deeper cut than any gunblade could ever give him.

"Look at you now."

He does not turn his head.

Fingers curl around his face and jerk his head toward the voice. Emerald green that is sharp and laced with gold spills around dilated pools of black. He watches them, and lets himself fall into them. The words are a numb buzz around him; he does not hear what they are saying, just knows that they are there, a familiar voice attached to a familiar face held up by not-so-familiar puppeteer strings of gold.

A manic gleam lights up the emerald, and, before he can think to do anything, his vision is swimming before him and his head burns, like liquid fire has been poured at the base of his skull. The hand pulls away from his face, and his head lolls forward, his chin tucked to the mildew and dust thickened fur that clings like a cobweb to his neck.

The fur is no longer the gorgeous snowy-white it once was. A sick gray color greets his eyes, and he wonders if the color is the same color as the sky above them, like when he first entered the castle.

The manic gleam is gone.

"Look at you now. The mercenary, defeated at last. And me, the valiant knight, standing, victorious, in all of my glory, before you. It's the perfect ending, don't you think?"

_No, _his mind screams, _no, not the perfect ending, it wasn't supposed to end this way, Time Compression, Rinoa, it wasn't supposed to—_

"Ri—"

His words are shoved back down his throat by a hand in his hair, forcing his head back, up.

"Look at me!"

_Always wanting to be the center of attention._

_Stand at attention – thumpclick, thumpclick: a military march._

He does not turn his head. He does not meet the emerald gaze that is boring down upon him like brimstone from the sky.

"You've lost, Squallyboy."

A silence. He does not respond. He has no words to respond with: he spent them all the first day – _when was the first day? –_ when he had the energy to fight back – _how long have I been here? – _and he has nothing left to say. His throat feels harsh, as if he has swallowed sand and dirt and it has built up, thick and suffocating, in his insides. His tongue is bone-dry, and his eyes burn and water with the curl of dust that falls down on him when his head slams the wall once more and sends the rotten, old stone dancing, like tiny specks of leaves, like – _stardust; space, Rinoa, Adel, Time Compression – _dirty, dead fireflies, over his face.

Laughter. The hand in his hair slips away, and the Knight runs it over his own hair, slicking back gold, and he suddenly looks different, the manic gleam is gone, and he suddenly looks like how he remembers him to look, when they'd wake up to the alarm at his bedside in the mornings in Balamb Garden, tangled around each other, smelling of sweat and sex and the faded gunpowder that stains their skin.

"You have no idea how lucky you are." The words shatter his thoughts like glass falling from a shelf when they were children, rolling and tumbling across the floor, fighting over the bedtime story of the night; it shatters like ice shooting from his hands, spreading beneath his fingertips and tearing through flesh and bone, practiced and perfect.

"You're lucky to be here. You're lucky to be alive. She could've killed you, y'know. Could have killed you the moment you walked in here, but she didn't." His hands are on his wrists. They are wrapping around the rust that digs into his flesh and makes him burn, and the Knight's face is inches away from his. He can taste his breath on his lips – it tastes of dust and cobwebs and that familiar flavor that makes him think of mornings in Balamb, of nights in hallways and hands on his shoulders. He can feel the warmth of his body seeping into his, burning him.

He burns all over.

The rust that digs into his hands falls away, and he crumbles to the ground. The stone scraps his cheek, but he doesn't have the energy to catch himself. He lies there, limply, breathing in the dust from the floor, musty, rotten water seeping into the fur that lines his neck and into his hair.

The Knight kneels beside him, smirking that Devil's smirk at him.

He does not turn his head. He does not want to look.

"I should show ya how lucky you are to be here. You're _lucky, _Squallyboy."

The hand tangles back into his hair, jerking him up, pulling him to his feet. He staggers, trips forward and falls backward, and it's déjà vu, a dance they've done before, only this time water sloshes around his feet and the cold click of his boots on metal is replaced with the slap of his feet on slick stone. An arm wraps around his waist too tightly, and he feels sick to his stomach at the familiarity of it all.

The arm moves, and shoves him forward. He walks, not knowing what else to do; he's being half dragged, the hand in his hair is pulling too tightly, his scalp feels too tight, and it makes his head pound. The blood in his ears is deafening.

The Knight drags him through black-filled corridors, cobwebs adhering to his skin, dust filling his lungs. The Knight leads him through this twisted maze of a woman's insanity given form, past paintings of things long dead, puzzles that have no solution, and lanterns that no longer light. Words spill from the Knight's lips as they go, low and feral, deep and so familiar yet he thinks he's never heard it before.

A burst of cold air, laced with the stench of fire and sulfur from the bend in reality that Time Compression has brought, flows over his face. The air is hot and makes it hard to breath and hard to walk. His leather sticks to his legs, slick and heavy.

The Knight pulls him by his hair, out of the door, onto a moonlit path with the wind wiping around him and howling like a beast that has been trapped in the sky and is pleading to be let out. The pathway is lined in cobblestone, and he watches the stones beneath his feet, and thinks how familiar this looks, thinks of a mission in a backwater city with adrenaline coursing through his body and a whisper of his blade through the air, in time with another's.

He is forced to the edge of the pathway; his head is jerked up to stare at the swirling black nothing below. In the distance he can see where they first entered, the chain that hangs, forlornly, from the castle that floats in the sky.

"You could be like _them. _You could be _dead, _but you're not, you're here. You're _lucky._" The breath on his neck burns him; the body pressed against his back burns him. The words sound like a growl in his ear.

"Delusional." He hisses, and his voice cracks and splits from disuse, a pitiful echo of its proud self.

The Knight snarls, and he's pulled back from the wall, the hand in his hair and the body against his shoving him forward once more. The stone wall along the pathway crushes against his abdomen, and the air is forced from his lungs. He gasps in the thick breeze to try to regain his composure.

"Look at them! You could be like _them; _it'd be so easy!" The voice sounds frantic and laced with fiery anger, but the intensity dims a moment later. The hand in his hair jerks his head in the direction of the shoreline, and he stares, stormy eyes hazy with dust, at the white shapes that lie, scattered, like the remaining snow drifts in the wake of spring, along the path. Crumbled toy soldiers that couldn't make it into the castle in the end.

"You've _lost_."

The hand in his hair pulls him away from the wall, throws him back, across the walkway. He falls to the ground, his back forced against the opposite side. His breaths are shallow. His head spins. His body burns. His face is buried in the dirtied, gray fur, and dust and cobwebs cling to his skin.

Laughter fills his ears, but he has no words left to say.

"This is the future, Squallyboy."

He does not turn his head.


End file.
